Then the climax came: the chorus. The moment that every high school ghetto girl lived for. Everyone knew what was getting ready to happen. Once the song said, “Pop, lock and drop it” on loop, Soraya popped her hip to the left, locked her hip to the right, and dropped her booty to the floor and bounced back up with her hips rolling like a tide. The force sent me stumbling backward like a slow-motion sequence from The Matrix, and then I crashed to the floor. It felt like the DJ had stopped the music and everyone stared in silence. My teammates gave me a hand up, laughing and saying, “Damn, bro, she put that ass on you, didn’t she!”
I did not want to show my face the next day of school. What was supposed to be a moment of celebration had turned out to be a moment of humiliation. I skulked the hallways trying to avoid eye contact with anyone. Without looking, I felt sure that everyone I passed pointed and mocked me.
I sat by myself during lunch, hoping to avoid any rehashing of that dreadful night. As I ate my bland cafeteria food and sipped my juice carton in silence, a girl’s voice disturbed my self-imposed exile.
“Hi,” she said. I turned to let the girl know that I wanted to be alone. But I was suddenly stunned and mute. It was Soraya.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, having already dropped into a seat. We talked about the other night. I confessed that I did not know how to dance. She laughed and assured me that it was okay. She saw it as a gateway to flirt with me.
“You must be a virgin,” she said as she looked at me and smiled in pity. I sat appalled, thinking, Virgin? Did she just call me a fuckin’ virgin? Does she know who I am? I’m a real ass nigga!
Then she continued, “It’s okay. Virgins need love, too,” as she placed one hand on my thigh. Then I thought, Wait a minute…
And I responded, “Yes, actually, I am.”
She talked about salacious things that I claimed to know nothing about. Things that she wanted to teach me. And a few days later, I let her be my instructor and I was her student. I could not believe that it actually worked.
Soon after, I was at a lunch table with a group of girls. A conversation about sex came up. They talked of things they had done. They talked of things they wanted to do. I decided to see if an unlikely gambit would work twice.
“Yeah, I don’t know about any of that,” I said. “I’m a virgin.”
“A virgin?” they exclaimed. One girl said it was cute, another said it was adorable, and another said, “So I would be your first?” We laughed it off, but I sensed a hint of sincerity in her joke. Weeks later, she took my virginity, too.
This reverse-psychology approach worked until senior prom. I was Bill Bellamy in the How to Be a Player scene when he finessed his way through a party full of his secret lovers. Except I did not make it out with a face as clean as his. When a posse of deceived and disgruntled girls compared notes and arrived at the truth, Soraya, the most infuriated of all, volunteered to act on behalf of the group. When prom night ended, she left me with a black eye, a busted lip, and a kick in the nuts.
I was on my way to becoming an NCAA Division I athlete. We continued winning and reporters wrote about colleges that were scouting me, including Furman and Liberty Universities.
My days as a troublemaker were over, in most ways. Coach made it clear that legal infractions and school suspensions would threaten my recruitment. And so could low grades. But my academic apathy continued. I did not need to be a good student. My grades were padded by teachers who thought they were doing me a favor by keeping me on the court. I was in IB classes and had no idea how they’d gotten on my schedule. I didn’t even know what IB meant. If I turned in homework, it was because a girlfriend did it for me. In classes, I napped. And I still passed with good grades, though I slept through the final exams.
I had one open block before my last period class. I left school during that block and often did not make it back for the final class, which threatened my game-day eligibility. Eligibility rules said that we had to be present for more than half the school day in order to play in games. Coach intervened by taking what had been my open block and filling it with a student assistantship for a teacher named Mr. Mills.
On my first day of what was supposedly work, Coach personally escorted me to Mills’s social studies class. “Thank you for taking him,” Coach said. “I need to keep him out of trouble.” I petulantly pressed past Mills without meeting his eyes or shaking his hand. I was too grown to be babysat, and I hated losing my one free period. Every day I flopped on the beanbag in the back of the classroom and lounged, occasionally removing my headphones to flirt with the girls in the back row. I was more of a student distraction than a teacher assistant. Mills gave me a score key and stacks of quizzes that went ungraded.
Then my MP3 player died and my only option was listening to Mills’s lesson on leadership and life habits. He talked about social skills and finance management and taxes. I cringed at his enumeration of all the taxes awaiting me in adulthood. I did not know that there were more taxes beyond the few cents extra the corner store added to the cost of an Arizona iced tea and a bag of chips.
Something about Mills made me actually want to pay attention to his words. For starters, he didn’t look like the square-ass male teachers in wash-weary polos, oversized khakis, and all-white New Balances. Mills was a Black man. He was fashionable, personable, powerful even. He walked with swag and wore tailored suits and patterned bow ties, and his baritone voice was as commanding as his towering stature. Students leaned into his every word. I had never seen a teacher hold the attention of teens without spewing threats of failing grades and after-school detentions. He used fancy words that everyone nodded at but surely did not understand. A student raised his hand and said, “Ayo, Mills, what dat mean?” and Mills chuckled in delight. Mills was the type of teacher whose charisma was so infectious that students accepted tardies to their next class just to share one more laugh with him after the bell rang. Everybody loved him. Even I was impressed. But he was a teacher. Therefore, he was my enemy.
Mills asked to speak with me after class one day. I expected him to confront me about the quizzes I hadn’t scored, or my disruptive back-row commentary, or the loud music leaking from my headphones. Instead, he just wanted to talk, but not about school or basketball. He didn’t ask the standard question, “So, what do you want to do in life?” He wanted to get to know me. The real me that no one else had ever really asked about.
It was odd having a teacher probe into my personal life. He asked about my family and I opened up about the pain of being separated from my siblings and waiting around for that monthly phone call from my mother telling me that she was still alive. He asked about my father and I confessed that we weren’t on speaking terms. I was uncomfortable with this level of vulnerability, but there was something about Mills that made me feel safe. Though we had just met, he looked at me like he knew me, like I was his son. I had talked to other Black men, of course, but never like this. He seemed to be the only one who did not want something from me. My friends back home wanted me to get out of the streets and do something with my life. My father wanted me to bring honor to his family name. My coaches wanted me to become their next success story. My teachers wanted to pass me on to the next unlucky instructor. Mills wanted to know who was hiding behind the grimace and durag and sagging jeans.
“Aight, enough about me,” I said. “I got a question for you.”
Over an hour had passed and it was almost time for me to head to basketball practice. But I could not go until I asked him the question burning inside me.
“Go ahead. What you got?” he invited.
“Yo, straight up… how do you talk like that?” I asked.
Mills burst out laughing and asked, “Talk like what?”
I sucked my teeth and said, “Man, you know what I mean. Like, you be using all them fancy words and shit.” I firmed my tone so he knew that I was serious, and I continued, “How do you talk like that? I’m tryna peep game.”
“Well,�
�� Mills said, “I read—”
I interrupted. “So you telling me if I read a couple books, I can talk like that, too?”
Mills was so tickled that he nearly fell from his chair. “It’s not that simple, son,” he said, trying to contain his amusement.
I looked at him with a blank face, because I was serious. I needed answers. Girls paid attention to him in a way they did not pay attention to other teachers, and I knew it had something to do with those fancy words.
“You laughing, but I’m serious,” I said. “You be sounding all poetic and shit. I’m tryna talk like that, too. You know… for the ladies.”
He toned down the chuckling and gave me a straight answer, whether I deserved one or not. “I used to be an English major in college,” he said. “My vocabulary is a result of my studies.” I made a mental note and thanked him as I rushed to grab my things and head to practice.
Recruitment letters were coming in from colleges throughout the South. I was sitting in class when Coach’s face appeared in the door’s window.
“Must be for you, Brandon,” my civics teacher said. “Make it quick.”
I went into the hall and Coach handed me letters from Lander University, Furman University, and Liberty University, each inviting me to their recruitment camp. It was late in the basketball season and I needed to nail down firm offers and make a choice. The clock was ticking.
Years of playing with explosive force was taking a toll on my knees. I’d developed patellar tendonitis, also known as jumper’s knee. From middle school, I’d trained to jump higher than everyone on the court to compensate for my lack of height. I was only five foot seven at the time but I could leap above six-footers to dunk the ball. During practice, teammates would always say, “Yo, Brandon, do that windmill!” and I’d charge toward the basket at full speed and power up as the momentum sent me rising and I slammed so hard that the rim would rattle. Now my knees were wearing down and those high-flying days were numbered.
In the semifinals of the state championship tournament we faced Daniel High School, a team we had beaten during the regular season. The face-off was in the huge gym at J. L. Mann High School, and the stands were packed with fans who had come to see two of the top point guards in the conference battle until the end. The tournament was single elimination. My focus was keen, knowing that if we won, we would head to the championship. But if we lost, my high school glory days were over.
From the tip-off to the fourth quarter, the game was neck and neck. About three minutes remained on the clock. As I brought the ball up the court, Coach noticed that I was limping. He looked at me and tapped his knee, asking if I was all right. I waved him off and called our “Carolina” play. I wanted the iso. I glanced at the shot clock and stalled because we were up two points. My teammates cleared the path so I could face my defender one-on-one. I hit my opponent with a combination of crossovers as I charged to the basket and leaped toward the rim, but I came crashing down on the floor, holding my knee and holding back a scream. Before Coach could dash onto the floor, I jumped up and started running back on defense. On the sideline, I saw Coach grab our second-string point guard and push him toward the scoring table. I thought, No, no, don’t do it. You can’t take me out. Not now.
Austin came running onto the floor and said, “I got you, bro.”
I limped to the bench and yelled, “Coach, what are you doing? You can’t take me out right now!”
He sat me down and said, “Listen to me, son. You have a college career waiting on you, and I am not about to let you blow that knee in this game.” But I didn’t care about that. I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was thinking about now. We had a championship game to reach. I had a team to lead and a legacy to leave. From my seat, I begged a few more times for Coach to let me back in. He ignored my pleas. My high school career was in the hands of my teammates and we were now down by two. Everyone on the bench and in the stands stood in anticipation. Only seconds remained. Austin pulled up for the three-point shot to put us up by one. He missed. We lost. And my high school career was over.
I could not forgive Coach or my body for failing me that day. But I had to shift my focus toward my college decision. It came down to Furman and Liberty. Furman’s recruitment camp was a few weeks out, which gave the inflammation in my knee time to calm down.
I had not seen or spoken to Coach Stevens in nearly four years. I was eager to reunite with the man who ignited my desire to play in the NCAA. I could not wait for him to see how I had evolved from a rising freshman into a high-flying senior. I was eager to show him that I had kept my promise to consider Furman.
It was my first time playing in a college arena. I glanced around wide-eyed and in awe of the locker room alone. It was glamorous and the walls were plastered with the team logo and graphics and action shots from games. The lockers glowed with lighting and they shamed our high school’s rusted, hickory-colored cubbies. These were personalized with each player’s name and jersey number. I let my fingers glide slowly across the inscription on a placard, imagining that it said FLEMING #15.
We gathered in the center of the arena to begin the session, nearly fifty recruits from schools across the country. Some players’ eyes were locked on to the coaches giving us orders for the day. Some of us exchanged cursory glares. It was every man for himself. We were rivals converging on a battlefield—each man fighting to be seen, fighting to be respected, fighting to have a scholarship bestowed upon him.
One of the assistant coaches gave us a pep talk about each of us being chosen for a reason. Then he said, “Now please welcome our coach of the Furman men’s basketball team.” We clapped and I smirked, knowing that my earlier encounter with the coaching staff gave me an advantage over the other guys. I knew he would remember me and put me at the top of his list. Then my clapping slowed and slackened because the man who took center court looked nothing like Coach Stevens.
“Good morning,” he said. “And welcome to Furman University men’s basketball.”
He asked us to bring it in and we all extended our hands. He said a few final words and we broke for the baseline. I nudged one of the coaches on my way.
“Hey, Coach,” I said. “Is Coach Stevens here today?”
He responded, “Coach Stevens has transitioned. Now hit the baseline.”
My mouth dropped and my adrenaline rush subsided. I had no special advantage over the other recruits. It dawned on me that I had not even checked the name on the letter that came to me from the Furman basketball office. I’d assumed that it was Coach Stevens summoning me to make good on my promise from freshman year. I tried to shake it off and ran to the baseline to begin warm-ups.
When scrimmaging began, the intensity accelerated fast as we clashed like bloodthirsty brutes. There were no referees, only coaches with folded arms and wide stances, looking for the fittest to survive. Whistles hung from their mouths, but they were seldom used. The game reminded me of the time my varsity coach called no fouls during practice to see how close we’d come to taking each other’s heads off. The court started to feel like a blacktop, and I could not be stopped.
Suddenly, my moment to shine presented itself. I was on a left-wing fast break, charging toward the goal from half-court. I saw a clear path, the rim, and a nearly seven-foot defender parallel on the other side, determined not to let me score. He saw himself pinning my shot on the glass. I saw him becoming the victim on my next slam-dunk poster. We met at the basket, leaped at the same time, and converged in midair. He stretched both of his hands high to the sky as I cocked the ball back out of his reach. It felt like we were soaring in slow motion, then his body started to descend as I continued to levitate. On his way down, his arms clipped my legs. In midair, my body flipped upside down until my eyes were staring at the hardwood. I dove and crashed face-first. I hit the court with violent force, splitting my eye at the brow and busting my bottom lip in half. I lay, concussed, in a puddle of my own blood. With my head ringing, I could hear the distant voice of my bro
ther and my cousins in New York yelling for me to get my bitch ass up. But this time, I couldn’t. The coaches rushed toward me yelling, “Call an ambulance!”
I woke up in a hospital bed with one eye nearly sealed shut and wires protruding from my swollen lip. It took about ten stitches to sew it back together. I turned my head to the right and saw my uncle sitting beside me, waiting for me to regain consciousness.
“You all right, buddy?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I responded. “Did I at least make the shot?”
He laughed and said, “No, but that was one heck of a dunk you tried.”
I lay back and rested my head. I was so numb that I could not feel any pain. The nurse came in to let us know that we were almost cleared to go.
“Can I still play?” I asked the nurse. She was taken aback, considering the circumstance, that I would ask to play with a busted face.
“No, son,” my uncle interjected. “You need to rest up.”
But I did not want to hear that. I was at a pivotal moment in my career and I could not let an injury block my way forward. I had to get back out there. I grew up a streetballer and I had been through worse. I’d been thrown to the asphalt. I’d played with blood streaming down my face, feeling no pain because that is what real niggas do.
The next morning, I got to the Furman gym where training was already underway. Whistles were blowing and drills were running when I pushed through the doors at the top of the arena. I was dressed to play and descended the stadium stairs. My right eye was half-shut and wires protruded from my lip like whiskers, but my face was stone with determination. I was halfway down the stands when the coach looked up and saw me. He blew the whistle for everyone to stop. No one expected to see me again, and by the time I reached courtside, the coaching staff and the recruits were clapping to welcome me back. Coach examined my face and said, “Are you sure that you can play?” I looked at him and said, “I don’t have another choice.” He smiled and patted me on the back of the head. Then he said, “Hit the baseline.”
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